Viva amaBokoboko. Fantastic! That image of the Springboks carrying our president shoulder high; wasn’t that just something? What makes it even more powerful is that it was spontaneous and unrehearsed. That spoke volumes about our beautiful land, our rainbow nation and its potential.
The land was a sea of green and gold and hardly a whisper about transformation. It has been marvellous to see all the celebrations — all of us one and race really an irrelevance. We were South Africans, finish and klaar! That is what we can be on a spectacular scale. When you think of where we came from — man, it is amazing that we have the stability that we enjoy, having had predictions that we would be overwhelmed by a horrific racial bloodbath. It did not happen and it is 13 years since the dramatic change.
We must celebrate all that. We have continuing economic growth. Our president has played a leading role in Africa brokering peace deals. The world still marvels at our Truth and Reconciliation Commission and sees it as having set a benchmark. Others are trying to emulate us. Ours is a fiercely independent media, except, sadly, for our public broadcaster. And we continue to bask in the reflected glory of that icon of magnanimity and forgiveness, Madiba, the undisputed moral colossus of our day.
Yes, we have all these and more going for us, so why should the Springbok victory in Paris come as a much-needed boost to a sagging morale? Well, it is that much has happened and is happening that is distressing, hardly the sort of thing we imagined we would have to be dealing with entering the second decade of our precious freedom.
We were flummoxed by a perplexing policy on HIV/Aids (mercifully jettisoned for a more conventional campaign) and a high crime rate. As if that were not enough, we have had the saga of a police commissioner under a massive cloud. In most decent democracies he would at the very least have been suspended pending the outcome of an inquiry. It is difficult to imagine a police force being galvanised to fight criminals with a chief seemingly so flawed.
I don’t have all the facts but am puzzled by what has happened to the former deputy minister of health and to the suspended director of the National Prosecuting Authority, and to a minister of health who has made us a laughing stock in health circles globally. Our friends who helped us become free are dismayed by our extraordinary postures internationally, represented by our very odd vote with China and Russia against a non-punitive resolution in the United Nations Security Council on Burma and our policy towards Zimbabwe. It all seems such a betrayal of our ideals and our past.
Our social fabric is unravelling and what do we do? We engage in the monumental red herring of a divisive name-changing exercise. And do our heroes and heroines come from only one political group? How many of the hungry and unemployed would put that hugely divisive exercise as their priority concern? No, politicians grown arrogant with power, as of yore, know what is good for us.
What an unedifying spectacle the leadership contest has become. Cry, the beloved country, cry as we see more and more who thumb their noses at the people.
We have a wonderful country with wonderful people. We have the potential to become a vibrant land responsive to the needs of its peoples, caring and compassionate, in which each know they matter. A country that belongs to all who live in it, in which the people shall indeed rule. Let us take back our country.
Those choosing party leaders — please do not choose those who will make us hang our heads in shame.
Desmond Tutu is Archbishop Emeritus, Cape Town